


outside of time

by lamphouse



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Drinking & Talking, Epilogue, Footnotes, M/M, but obviously intended as slash, like 'picks up hours after the book ends' kind of epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: We talk in the dark as we fall asleep, and we are objects in the night sky outside of time. (It is the exact opposite of alone.)The end of the first day of the rest of their lives is both very familiar and very different from every day before it.





	outside of time

They had parted ways for all of twenty minutes since the Armageddidn't.

Until then, Crowley and Aziraphale had spent their time in the new world in the following ways: sitting on some tarmac, talking around what happened;1 driving back to London;2 drinking at Crowley's;3 unconscious at Crowley's;4 and trying to part ways politely without thinking about what had happened last time they tried to do this.5 At that point they had each tried to go about their business until Aziraphale had called to see if maybe Crowley would like to meet at the park.6

Since then they've been trailing each other like lost ducklings, staring blankly at the world around them so blissfully unchanged. They'd gone to the Ritz, gone back to the park, meandered around for ages, and ended up (as they so often seemed to do) at the bookshop.

* * *

1 The details post-showdown are blurry, but at the very least, Crowley can tell they were there much longer than it should have taken to finish what was nominally just one bottle.

2 One _Water Music_ (fifty-eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds).

3 Again: unclear, but several hours.

4 Two hours, interspersed with moments of jolting awake from what-might-have-been nightmares.

5 Seven minutes.

6 For what it's worth, this conversation lasts less than a minute.

* * *

"I was thinking," Crowley says as he follows Aziraphale into the backroom, no invitation, only assumption, "what if we never hear from our people, either set? What if they just... never call?"

He could sit down, and he maybe should,7 but he doesn't want to stop moving.

Aziraphale reappears in the doorway much sooner than expected, nearly walking right into Crowley. He usually takes forever, picking out just the right glasses, just the right bottle, regardless of the fact that it will always end up far redder and older than it started. Tonight, it seems, particulars don't matter so much as not being alone. An odd thought, that.

Crowley steps left, Aziraphale steps right, they keep stepping into each other until Crowley snatches the glasses out of Aziraphale's tenuous grasp and stalks over to the table.

"What, you think they won't have noticed our involvement?" Aziraphale fills both their glasses to the top without asking. "I highly doubt that."

"Unfortunately, I think flying under the radar is no longer an option," Crowley takes a long sip from his glass, wishing for once that he didn't have the ability to sober up as consciously as he usually did, because something about the heightened state of anxiety jams the sober switch on "on" for demons. Or maybe just Crowley. He doesn't really want to know, though—and, point of fact, might never know now.

"No," he continues out loud after an unsuitably long pause, "I rather fear it's the opposite—that we were too noisy, too noticeable, and that in order to not acknowledge where they each went wrong, they might never acknowledge either of our existences ever again."

He looks up from his wine. "Blink, angel."

Aziraphale doesn't, but that's fine.8 Crowley refills his glass anyway.

* * *

7 He'd only just realized how long he'd been on his feet. Walking places felt odd, but the new-old Bentley felt odder, and Crowley was still afraid to so much as touch the radio dial, though he didn't know which outcome would be worse.

8 It is not, biologically speaking. One of these days, he'll dry out, and what then? No more reading, that's for sure.

* * *

"They couldn't..." He lifts the glass to his mouth without looking back from whatever middle distance he's stuck on. "Surely they wouldn't?"

Crowley shrugs. "Brave new world, right? I wouldn't put it past my side, or yours either." A beat as he thinks, and then adds, "Actually, it sounds right up their alley, freezing you out just for doing the right thing the wrong way."

He's not actually sure it was the right thing—in their eyes, that is. On this issue, at least, Crowley knows where he stands,9 and he knows that's not likely to change anytime soon.

"Oh dear," Aziraphale says, but it's mechanical and not all there. He still hasn't blinked. "You mean..."

He starts to suddenly look green around the edges, and again Crowley wishes he were currently capable of being anything less than jitteringly, stone cold sober.

"Er. It could be worse," he hurries to say. His hands fling out a little too far and catch the neck of the bottle, sending it teetering a little too violently to be brushed off. "We could be..."

Well, there are many things that could be being done to them at this moment, but they're all too unpleasant to voice aloud right now. By the suddenly alarmed look on Aziraphale's face, he doesn't need to.

"It could be worse," Crowley finishes.

"Could it really? I mean, what if they were to—?"

He pauses for a long while, staring at his glass with intent now. Just when Crowley is about to wonder aloud if he's finally snapped, Aziraphale takes a sip, heaves an enormous sigh of relief, and downs the rest of the glass in one go.

"At least there's that," Aziraphale says to himself, presumably, as Crowley has no idea what is going on.

"What?" He asks dumbly. Aziraphale is still drinking. "There's what, angel?"

"Miracles." Aziraphale wipes his mouth unnecessarily, suddenly quite calm. "Would you like some?"

Crowley doesn't have to look to know what's in his glass has changed. It's got a haze to it now, the molecules all shifted, out of place, something else filling the gaps. Normally he would no longer even notice the change, but now it feels... threatening. He still drinks it, though. It's not much different from the original wine, but enough that he knows an effort has been made to change it.

"What happened to not wanting to draw attention?" He asks when he finishes.

Aziraphale shrugs. "It's like you said. They'll have already noticed, won't they? What's one more do you think? Surely a little bit of wine wouldn't be where they draw the line Upstairs?"

It absolutely would be,10 and they both know it, which sends a little shiver down Crowley's spine.

"Really, my dear," Aziraphale is already continuing with a quietly hysterical undertone, "why not? They've got a saying for it, haven't they? Living as though one is about to die. I suppose we can't, necessarily, but that's the general idea, right?"

"Look, if you're going to be all—" Crowley waves a hand ineffectually. "Er, whatever you call this, then I'll just leave, shall I?"

He goes to stand but is stopped by one of Aziraphale's hands landing mostly on his arm. He's very warm, Crowley thinks, still half standing, half seated. If he had remembered to wear a tie today, it would be in his drink, but he doesn't move.

"Don't do _that_." Aziraphale seems vaguely embarrassed, but doesn't let go, just tugs slightly until Crowley tumbles back down into his seat. "Don't— I should think it's obvious."

Crowley is starting to feel as though maybe he _is_ drunk, or that he's the one who's finally lost his mind. "Think what is?"

"You know you don't have to leave," Aziraphale murmurs petulantly as his glass. His hand, remarkably, is still on Crowley's arm, though neither of them seem to have noticed. "Not—"

He stops as soon as he starts, but Crowley feels _something_ shift nevertheless, like the feeling of orders being put directly in his head but softer, warmer—no more comfortable, but not unwelcome.

The bottle stands stalwart in the middle of the table, unaffected by Crowley's confusion, and for a moment Crowley can almost picture how the scene looks from the outside, having been in it so often. Two figures, two glasses, one bottle and one table between them. The lights are yellow. The windows are dark. It's almost frighteningly normal, but for the one point of physical contact.

"It feels like things should be different," Crowley hears himself say.

"They are."

"Hm." Silence gathers between them, still neither moving. "Are they?"

"Of course they are, just as much as they aren't." Aziraphale glanced back from the window, though Crowley hadn't noticed he had ever looked away.11 "All the... the stuff that'd been around the whole time, surfacing. Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium and all that."

"If you've resorted to Eliot, I think we ought to take a break." From what, Crowley's not sure he could say—at least, not aloud. Aziraphale seems to know what he means anyway, and miraculously lets it lie, instead patting Crowley's arm once before standing.

"You'll be staying, then?"

It's a question and a half, if not more. Aziraphale's hand is reaching down in front of Crowley's eyes, but he doesn't see it. He's still searching Aziraphale's face for... something, he doesn't know what.

He finds something, he doesn't know what, and takes Aziraphale's hand, grabbing the bottle before they head upstairs.

* * *

9 He's pretty sure it's right next to Aziraphale, but he could be wrong. He's been wrong about a lot of things recently. He hasn't got the greatest track record, though it _does_ seem to be improving.

10 Gabriel is nitpicky like that, at least when it comes to Aziraphale. Yet another reason to worry about why Aziraphale still hasn't been called Up There.

11 It felt always like he was looking, and that couldn't be right, but Crowley was beginning to realize he was a bit less sober than he thought, and he almost wished he still wasn't.

* * *

Neither of them bothers to turn on the light when they reach what is technically Aziraphale's bedroom.12 They sink, as one disjointed mess, onto the squashy floral sofa, and the bottles start piling up around them. It's apparently much easier to get drunk in the dark—either that, or it's less anxiety inducing to do so.

The moon has started to sink again by the time Crowley finds himself finally drunk enough to speak up.

"Y'think if Heaven doesn't want me and Hell doesn't want you, we could just... stay here?"

"What else could we do?" Aziraphale aims for the glass he hadn't brought up with him but that was there nonetheless. "Can't go back."

Crowley shifts restlessly on his side of the sofa. It's suddenly cold, and he wishes he still had his jacket, or that Aziraphale hadn't shifted away to abandon his glass on the floor.

"I mean, no my side, no your side, just..."

"Our side," Aziraphale supplies. It's much easier to not miss when the target is one's own mouth. It's also enough of a distraction that he misses Crowley's expression.

"Right. Yeah."

There is a relentless silence then, at least on Crowley's part. Aziraphale seems more occupied with finding a position where there aren't springs waiting to poke him in places he didn't know he still had. He ends up much closer than Crowley had planned for,13 close enough that (in order for them to both fit, of course) Crowley has to move his arm to the back of the sofa, to Aziraphale's shoulders when they start to slump over, deeper into the couch and into sleep.

When the wake up, it is Monday, and the world is moving on.14 They don't talk about it, but Crowley and Aziraphale are too.

* * *

12 It _is_ a bedroom, though it is not a room with a bed, nor a room in which one sleeps or any other usual definition of a bedroom.

13 A Freudian slip, if there ever was one.

14 They don't know that that's what they're doing, but it is.

**Author's Note:**

> swear to god the footnotes aren't just because this is good omens, i've just been on a footnotes kick lately with school papers, and i just love them.
> 
> (i mean, alright, yes, my predilection for footnotes as a literary device DOES come from my love of this book, and yes once i wrote the first (about the bentley, fwiw, though it retrospectively made the first section a lot easier to read), it was hard to not continue, especially with this voice, but i swear it wasn't meant to be a sly, gimmicky reference lmao) (also i like making sections this way, it's very neat)
> 
> anyway uh i've never written these two before??? or at least, not since five years ago when i first read the book, but that was too disastrous to bear. but i'm doing the go exchange this year, so, gotta warm up. lemme know how it went for you all!
> 
> the title comes from [_a softer world_ #917](), and the ts eliot poem that aziraphale quotes is "[rhapsody on a windy night](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44215/rhapsody-on-a-windy-night)" (i wish i'd been able to fit "Now that we talk of dying— / And should I have the right to smile?" from "portrait of a lady" but alas, i could not) (i also almost pulled a title from "in our bedroom after the war" but i couldn't bring myself to asdfghljk)
> 
> also hey professor larsen! hope you're having an alright time, grading all those last minute submissions! sorry for being one of them
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com)


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